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Suetonius while thus occupied received
tidings of the sudden revolt of the province. Prasutagus, king of the Iceni,
famed for his long prosperity, had made the emperor his heir along with his
two daughters, under the impression that this token of submission would put
his kingdom and his house out of the reach of wrong. But the reverse was the
result, so much so that his kingdom was plundered by centurions, his house
by slaves, as if they were the spoils of war. First, his wife Boudicea was
scourged, and his daughters outraged. All the chief men of the Iceni, as if
Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were
stript of their ancestral possessions, and the king's relatives were made
slaves. Roused by these insults and the dread of worse, reduced as they now
were into the condition of a province, they flew to arms and stirred to
revolt the Trinobantes and others who, not yet cowed by slavery, had agreed
in secret conspiracy to reclaim their freedom. It was against the veterans
that their hatred was most intense. For these new settlers in the colony of
Camulodunum drove people out of their houses,
ejected them from their farms, called them captives and slaves, and the
lawlessness of the veterans was encouraged by the soldiers,
who
lived a similar life and hoped for similar licence. A temple also erected to
the Divine Claudius was ever before their eyes, a citadel, as it seemed, of
perpetual tyranny. Men chosen as priests had to squander their whole
fortunes under the pretence of a religious ceremonial. It appeared too no
difficult matter to destroy the colony, undefended as it was by
fortifications, a precaution neglected by our generals, while they thought
more of what was agreeable than of what was expedient.